


If you’ve been waiting (for falling in love)

by spooky_bee



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is done with Crowley's bullshit, But maybe not the wedding you’re hoping for, Crowley and Aziraphale are my last two brain cells fighting over oxygen, Existential Crises, F/M, M/M, Slow Dancing, Thomas Aquinas, all good weddings have open bars, philosophical discussions on the concept of eternity, positive post-apocalypse, wedding fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-13 06:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19245736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spooky_bee/pseuds/spooky_bee
Summary: Truly, Crowley would be pleased as spiked punch to spend the rest of eternity avoiding matrimony altogether.Unfortunately, eternity is a bloody long time, and humans always managed to surprise him.





	If you’ve been waiting (for falling in love)

**Author's Note:**

> As with many here, the Good Omens TV adaptation has caused me to dig my AO3 login info out of the recesses of my mind. Fair warning, I haven’t read the book in a very long time, so this will largely be TV adaptation compliant even though I've marked the book down as well.
> 
> I have a mild obsession with other people’s weddings, so I beg you to indulge me as the (as yet unmarried) ineffable husbands scratch that itch for me. (I humbly request you don’t read any of my other fics so you don’t realize how bad it is.)
> 
> Title is from the Joji song “Sanctuary,” which is very Crowley and Aziraphale, and also very good.

_If you’ve been waiting for falling in love_

_Babe, you don’t have to wait on me_

_’Cause I’ve been aiming for heaven above_

_But an angel ain’t what I need_

* * *

Crowley didn’t make a habit of going to weddings. After all, the whole “holy union of two souls for all eternity” bit really seemed more like the business of the opposition, although forcing your friends and relatives to buy expensive clothing, eat tasteless catering, and dance the Cupid Shuffle did all seem like something he wished he could take credit for.

There was the occasional Satanic wedding. The modest dues you paid to become an official member of the Satanic church allowed you to invite a single demon of your choosing to your nuptials. Crowley was an unusual choice, largely because he made a habit of making himself mostly scarce to humans, while the bigger names, like Beelzebub, were often conscripted to make appearances. Crowley would never understand why starry-eyed young Satanists never gleaned from the title “Lord of the Flies” what they were signing up for.

But while the phrase “Satanic wedding” might sound fairly exciting to many of you, Crowley knew the truth. Satanists weren’t all that different from their holy counterparts, and Satanic weddings were largely just Christian weddings set to Dark Mode. (Dark Mode had been a poorly executed move by the other side, meant to shield humans’ fleshy, fragile eyeballs from the ravages of blue light—one of Hell's—although it primarily resulted in humans scrolling Twitter late into the night, working themselves into a lather over politics, or video games, or the fact that Twitter had been designed by the infernal authorities primarily to incite unending rage on all those who joined it.)

Weddings just didn’t carry with them the air of rebellion, of the joyful rebuking of rules, that Crowley found so endlessly fascinating about humans. Sure, occasionally he would sit in on the Elvis impersonator-officiated ceremonies of the inebriated, or the small-scale, hushed same-sex weddings in places where that sort of thing was still illegal, but those were rare. From Crowley’s experience, humans very rarely married out of love, so much as they did it out of some sort of societal obligation. To whom, Crowley wasn’t sure, but if they wanted to have babies, or get tax breaks, or receive egg timers and _sous vide_ machines and garlic presses, they married, and it really wasn't any of Crowley's business. It wasn’t very complicated, and Crowley liked complicated. When they weren’t being so dull and predictable, humans were the most complicated things in the whole of creation. If Crowley wanted predictable, he would hang out in Hell more often, watch every demon try to one-up themselves in how they could spread misery and malice in ever more uncreative ways.

So Crowley avoided weddings. He preferred back-alley trysts, and infidelitous housewives, and, generally, anything that had stakes. With the proliferation of divorce (many thanks to Henry VIII, a true lad’s lad and one of Crowley’s proudest tempted souls), marriage simply didn’t have stakes anymore. Once the Catholics were doing it, all bets were really off.

Truly, Crowley would be pleased as spiked punch to spend the rest of eternity avoiding matrimony altogether.

Unfortunately, eternity is a bloody long time, and humans always managed to surprise him.

Crowley had lived in his flat longer than most people had lived in London, mainly because the strong cocktail of gentrification and rising rent prices didn’t keep anyone in London for long anymore (not his doing, capitalism is something so wicked even a demon couldn’t have dreamt it up). In all that time, he’d never received mail. To receive mail, you had to be a real person, with a job, an address, the types of things Crowley avoided like the Plague (also not his doing, it took way too long for Europeans to learn about personal hygiene). As far as he knew, no one knew his address, not even Aziraphale. If he ever needed to show up, he simply would, finding the place with some sort of divine Doppler radar. Besides, Why drink in his flat, which he would have to eventually clean, when they could drink in Aziraphale’s bookshop, where you could spill a thousand drinks and no one would notice amidst all the clutter? Crowley’s flat was his own private oasis, free most of the time from all forces, infernal or angelic, and populated primarily with the world’s most dutiful house plants and all manner of hideous modern art. It was the best home a demon could ask for.

That is, until one winter evening when he returned after a long night sampling that year’s Beaujolais Nouveau, only to find an envelope slipped surreptitiously under his front door.

After a reasonable amount of bad-faith inspection to ensure that it wasn’t booby trapped, Crowley noticed something unusual on the return address. It wasn't the London post code, which was not that unusual for a city of millions of slowly dying mortals. Rather, the truly startling aspect of this letter was the fact that, if it needed to be returned, it would be sent to “WITCHFINDER SGT. SHADWELL & MADAME TRACY.”

"Hm,” Crowley hummed, slipping a fingernail under the seal of the envelope.

He wasn’t precisely sure what mail could’ve required being sent from both Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell and Madame Tracy, or how they’d found his address, but sure, he figured, he’d bite.

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO, the invitation began.

”Oh, bugger,” he cursed. They’d really gone and done it, hadn’t they?

Madame Tracy seemed like a nice enough person. She was at least nice enough that Aziraphale’s ethereal form was able to slip into her body for a while, and he couldn’t imagine many people were up to that standard. What he couldn’t understand was why she, an eccentric but likable enough woman, would want to spend the dwindling rest of her life with a mad pensioner who seemed unable to address her outside of the seventeenth century's best misogynistic slurs. He knew some people in Hell who might be into that sort of thing, but it didn’t seem particularly normal for a human.

If there was anything that Crowley had learned about humans in his six millennia on earth, however, it was that you could only ever count on them to do the exact thing you hadn’t expected.

When was the last time he had been to a wedding, anyway? It had probably been at least forty years or so. The demonic thing to do, of course, would be to mark himself as “Attending” and then not show, forcing the newlyweds to pay for a dinner that would never get eaten, not to mention bungling their seating arrangement. But, all things considered, Crowley was getting rather tired of always considering the demonic thing to do. He wasn’t sure anyone was even keeping score these days. Of course, he could just mark himself as “Not Attending” and could chuck them a gift if he was feeling extra charitable, but what was the point in buying a gift for a party you weren’t even going to attend?

Unsure of what he actually wanted to do, and craving a bit of moral arbitration, he picked up the phone.

”Crowley!” Aziraphale chirped from the other line, voice tinny. “Why, we’ve just left each other’s company! You simply can’t get enough of me, can you?” Aziraphale chortled at his own joke, while Crowley silently gagged.

”Hardly,” he said, although a particularly impudent fern shivered its leaves in a way that suggested it knew he was lying. And he was lying. Crowley could have more than enough of practically everyone and everything. Humans could be fickle and stupid, demons could be needlessly aggressive and boring, and angels could be pretentious and judgmental. Animals, too, could get on his nerves. Even his plants, when they deserved the withering glare that this particularly rebellious fiddlehead was getting, could earn his ire. Aziraphale, though, never (or, at least, very rarely) seemed to. As all friends who has known each other for as long as they had (they might, he reasoned, be the only friends in the entirety of history, both recorded and unrecorded, who had known each other as long as they had), they had their occasional tiffs and squabbles, but they always seemed to be easily resolved. They could go a decade or two without speaking to each other, but then some upstart young playwright somewhere would need an audience, or the Nintendo Wii would be invented and Crowley would want to watch Aziraphale attempt to play virtual tennis, or he would simply get bored, mind dulled by the endless pulse and flux of human activity, the constant inconsistency of it all, and would crave some familiarity. Crowley didn’t suffer fools, and although Aziraphale could occasionally be a fool (see previous bad joke), Crowley wouldn’t exactly say that he was suffering.

”Have you checked the post today?” Crowley asked.

”I did!” chimed Aziraphale, needlessly enthused by something so mundane. But then, Aziraphale enjoyed the mail in the same way he enjoyed tea kettles you set on the stove even when electric kettles were cheap and readily available, or typewriters even when there were computers. It was why he owned a rare bookshop even though no one in London seemed to read anything longer than a Tweet these days and mainly kept books around as decoration.

“So you saw that Shadwell and Tracy are getting hitched?”

”Oh, yes! All so very exciting!”

”You don’t think it’s a bit strange?” Crowley prodded. “Or hasty?”

"Hasty?” Aziraphale asked. “They’ve practically lived together for years. She’s been cooking his supper, he’s been keeping the riffraff away from her business. As far as I can tell, they’re just making it official.” Crowley hummed, trying to parse this. When Aziraphale put it this way, it did all sound rather more reasonable. But then Crowley would have to remind himself that they were speaking about an aging Scottish witch hunter and a medium/sex worker with an affinity for stuffed animals and vintage fashion. These weren’t exactly two yuppie Londoners deciding to just get on with it after shagging routinely and cohabiting for a few years.

"So you’re going, then?” Crowley asked, suddenly desperate to just get to the point.

"But of course!” Aziraphale said. “Inhabiting someone’s body, however briefly, does incur upon you both an unusual sort of bond. And from that time I could tell that they did really adore each other, underneath all the banter. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Or the end of the world. Or—well you get the idea.” Crowley hummed again. He wasn’t quite sure he did get the idea. “And what about yourself?”

"Well, I was rather on the fence about the whole ordeal. Weddings tend to be rather dull, don’t they?”

”Oh, I couldn’t disagree more!” said Aziraphale, scandalized. “What could be less dull than two humans committing to spend the remainder of their lives together, through sickness and health, at the expense of all others?”

"You do know that divorce exists, right? And that’s it’s very, very popular?”

"It’s still a noble endeavor though, isn’t it?” Aziraphale asked, passing an angelic steamroller over Crowley’s point. “Humans are fallible creatures, of course, but isn’t it rather wonderful how they still try? Even if it doesn’t work out, they’re all hoping to find someone to spend forever with.”

Crowley chuckled, a bit bitterly. “Forever,” he said snidely. Humans knew about as much about “forever” as they knew about dark matter. Not that Crowley knew anything about dark matter, either, but you get his point. Humans were like mayflies. They were alive for such a short amount of time, being born and then largely spending their days screaming and fucking and buying and killing each other until their hearts gave out. Even if humans were able to accurately spot someone they could stand being around for the rest of their lives, even the ones who got married quite early would only have fifty or sixty years or so, at the most. That was hardly “forever.”

”Well, I think it’s lovely,” Aziraphale insisted. The line hung silently for a moment, Crowley feeling that the conversation had veered so far afield of what he had anticipated that he wasn’t quite sure what to say anymore. “Are you not going, then?” Aziraphale asked, bringing them back to the question at hand. He sounded hesitant, which made sense to Crowley. Even if you were absolutely mad for weddings, as Aziraphale appeared to be, going by yourself when you only knew the couple getting married didn't sound particularly fun.

With the apocalypse averted and being fairly assured that no one from either the devilish or angelic spheres was going to be meddling in his affairs anytime soon, Crowley’s social calendar was suddenly wide, wide open, yawning into eternity, asking him how he planned on spending all of this time. One Saturday evening out of an infinite number of other Saturday evenings wouldn’t make much of a difference, of course. But both Tracy and Shadwell were getting up there in years now, softening and greying, and Crowley knew that if he stopped paying attention for what felt to him like a second, they would be dead before he knew it. And he did like them. They were both completely bizarre, which was what Crowley liked best in people.

And besides, no self-respecting wedding would even bother existing without an open bar. And, as Crowley considered the open bar to be the pinnacle of human inventiveness, he couldn’t justify turning his nose up at one.

”I suppose I’ll go,” Crowley said, trying to sound very busy and put-upon.

”Oh, splendid! Would you mind giving me a lift, then?”

”I’m offended you even feel the need to ask that,” said Crowley, and he hung up.

The wedding invitation had the same plumpness as other pieces of important mail, having a heft to it that Crowley found to be, potentially, symbolic for the weighty journey that Shadwell and Tracy were embarking on (or maybe this was complete and utter rubbish and he was trying to find a reason to explain why two, primarily, ordinary people were sending him a letter with as many pieces of paper in it as someone trying to con him into renting out a timeshare). Inside was a, mostly, tasteful save the date card that Crowley could easily affix to any surface in his flat, since almost all of them were made of metal. They were to marry in June. How surprisingly traditional. Crowley always found this bit of tradition rather funny, since it was pagan all the way down. The Romans started marrying in June to honor Juno, the goddess of marriage, but somehow the Romans kept on doing it after they converted en masse to Christianity, and brought it with them to the British Isles. Now respectable Christian couples unknowingly incorporated pagan symbolism into their weddings. It was all rather brilliant.

There was also still the damned RSVP. Now that it had been discussed, he figured he really had no other choice, marking himself down as "Attending" with a smart red pen that was specifically designed to force anyone who saw its writing to unwittingly recall their school days and every bad mark they had ever received. He should have, perhaps, used a different pen, but this one was still his favorite.

Sealing the RSVP into its neat return envelope felt oddly final. It was just a wedding. People got married and attended weddings all the time. And although he hadn't been to one personally in a fair number of years, he had still been to them. And he was absolutely sure that Aziraphale had been to dozens, if not hundreds, over his angelic tenure. So what made this different?

For starters, these weren't random strangers. He knew Shadwell and Tracy, and they knew him.

And, while Crowley and Aziraphale had attended many weddings separately, he didn't think they had ever actually attended one together.

Rather than dragging the offensive little thing to the post office, Crowley merely snapped and sent it on its way. Some human rituals he enjoyed for their quaint charm, but some really were a waste of time. Now he had to spend the next seven months trying to decide what to buy for the witchfinder who had everything, and his deeply unusual bride.

* * *

Aziraphale and Crowley were very different people (Occult beings? Ethereal entities? Emissaries of grand powers, both light and dark? You get the idea.), but they could agree on many things. They agreed that while a deep, red wine was likely the greatest liquid ever created by hands mortal or immortal, there really was no holding a candle to champagne (the real stuff, from Champagne, none of that artificially carbonated grape juice they tried to pass off as champagne at Tesco) when the situation demanded it. They agreed that, while God was theoretically a being of pure, unending, blinding love, They got up to a lot of surprisingly violent nonsense over the years. They also agreed on Oscar Wilde being, perhaps, the single greatest person to flounce about the Victorian era. Aziraphale and Crowley both fought valiantly to bring him to either of their sides, but found that, remarkably, he sat somewhere in the middle. He had his hedonistic tendencies and sharp wit, sure, but he also had a late-in-life Catholic resurgence, so the jury was really still out.

Either way, Wilde was a favorite, and if you looked closely at his work, you could see their fingerprints all over it. One that Crowley was particularly proud of was the witticism "You can never be over-dressed or over-educated," which was half him (over-dressed) and half Aziraphale (over-educated).

Crowley lamented the slow decline into casual fashion that the world had slipped into over the last century. He tired of blue jeans and yoga pants and bomber jackets. There were so few occasions to really get dressed to the nines anymore (aside from the Met Gala, which he did occasionally crash, if the theme was good enough). And if you couldn't go all out for a wedding, when else were you going to do it?

Crowley pulled his Bentley up in front of Aziraphale's bookshop, honked twice, and winced when he saw Aziraphale enter the car, looking not much different than he usually did.

"Are you going to a wedding or an academic conference?" Crowley asked.

Aziraphale blinked, startled. "What do you mean? I thought I looked nice."

"Wedding aren't about looking  _nice_ ," Crowley protested. "Weddings are a cutthroat competition to look the absolute best out of everyone there."

Aziraphale looked perplexed. "I thought it was rude to upstage the bridge and groom? Or bride and bride? Or groom and groom?"

"I got what you meant the first time, but your dedication to being inclusive is admirable," Crowley said, and Aziraphale grinned, pleased. "And you're right, it is rude, but weddings are bloodthirsty affairs. People don't tend to get together and drink that much around their friends and family anymore, so tensions are bound to run high. Everyone has spent too much money on gifts and clothes and travel expenses, so they're likely cranky, and then they're stuck there through the ceremony, and then the reception, so you've got to take your victories where you can, like being the best-dressed person in attendance."

Aziraphale's pleasure melted into perplexity again. "You're an awfully cynical person, you know that?"

Crowley (gently, admittedly, to avoid hitting the horn) bashed his head against his steering wheel. "I'm a  _demon_. I'm  _supposed_ to be cynical."

"I suppose," Aziraphale said blithely. "I do think you look rather dashing, though."

Crowley raised his head cautiously from the steering wheel. "Dashing?" The tuxedo he was wearing (and yes, it was a full tuxedo, because there were never enough opportunities to wear them) was impeccable, and would have cost an arm and a leg had he not struck a demonic bargain with the house of Armani back in the day. Maybe he was putting it on a bit thick. The tuxedo came with a black silk bow tie, which gleamed like obsidian when it caught the light, but Crowley had left it intentionally undone, so that he would (hopefully) look like he had snuck off to have a snog behind the buffet at any point during the night (and not like a cut-rate Frank Sinatra impersonator). "I was going more for 'rakish,' or 'devilishly handsome.'"

Aziraphale considered this for a moment before deciding "No, I think you look dashing."

"All sartorial debates aside, we had best get going. While I wouldn't mind being late, I have a feeling you would mind."

"Well, I don't want to miss the ceremony."

"Of course," Crowley said, leaving out that the ceremony was the worst part of any wedding, unless someone stood up with an objection midway through, or someone got abandoned at the altar,  _The Graduate_ -style. Receptions were where the real carnage happened, so, naturally, they were infinitely more enjoyable for all involved. If anyone had any doubts that inside every human being was a small kernel of pure evil, they had never watched someone's estranged aunts be seated at the same table and forced to make lukewarm conversation over canapés, or watched someone's drunken cousin get a bit too familiar with the wedding DJ after becoming convinced that, because he played Toto's "Africa" when requested, they were meant to be together. 

Crowley wasn't sure if the soon-to-be-Mr.-and-Mrs.-Shadwell had chosen their venue for his convenience, or if tradition simply wasn't their style, but the ceremony was not to be held in a church. Instead, it was held at a small banquet hall which seemed to have gotten stuck in the mire of 1970's interior decorating, and was thus covered in wood paneling in a way that he was sure Tracy loved, but which made Crowley feel as if he were walking into a jewelry box.

Whether due to their age, their eccentricity, or some other factor that Crowley wasn't aware of, the guest list was also small. Madame Tracy apparently had sisters, who, remarkably, seemed to be perfectly standard-issue British matrons, all pearls and matching pastel skirt sets. Although Crowley hadn't been around Tracy a significant amount, this made him like her more, because it proved that she was the genuine article: unusual despite all odds. There was no infernal equivalent to the concept of patron saints, but Crowley liked to think that he could be the honorary patron demon of black sheep. All demons were black sheep to a certain extent, but he had never really tried, had no serious political compunction to end up this way. He just  _had_ , and he figured that Tracy had been much the same.

Tracy's standard-issue sisters had doughy, standard-issue husbands, and had, with them, produced a veritable flock of nervous-looking, pale children who looked as if they had always been destined to achieve middle age, outfitted in drab sundresses and loafers and fitness tracking devices (one of his, naturally). And, from these children, there was practically a football club of grandchildren, ranging in age from sticky toddlers to disaffected teenagers, watching other people play video games on their smart phones and, for all intents and purposes, astral projecting away from the whole mess. It was absolutely horrid, Tracy's sisters standing by the buffet like judges, looking down their pudgy noses at the whole affair, while their children frantically chased after the grandchildren, often to no avail. The grandchildren, somehow, seemed to be the most levelheaded of the bunch, and were largely minding their own business when they weren't destroying the banquet hall. It was completely miserable. Crowley  _loved it_. 

Crowley grinned, carrying his gifts for the happy couple over to the table where the other gifts were laid. "Now  _that's_ what I'm talking about," he said to Aziraphale, not even bothering to whisper, because he doubted any of Tracy's family would deign to eavesdrop on them.

"I didn't know Madame Tracy had sisters!" Aziraphale said brightly. "Should we go and introduce ourselves?"

Crowley grimaced. Half the fun of weddings was watching the disasters from the sidelines, and he wasn't going to have that ruined by Aziraphale's convivial spirit. Crowley took Aziraphale's gifts, set them on the table beside his own (Aziraphale's tasteful white and gold wrapping paper contrasting artfully against Crowley's own Baby Shark paper--the ugliest he could find), and hooked an arm through one of Aziraphale's. "Absolutely not."

Through the crowd of Tracy's relatives, Crowley spotted a surprisingly familiar face. Beneath the familiar face was a shabby sport coat and a pair of wrinkled trousers, and beside the face was a beautiful young woman dressed resplendently in emerald green. There was no mistaking them.

"Witchfinder Private Pulsifer," Crowley said, throwing up a salute with the arm that wasn't currently serving as an anchor to prevent Aziraphale from (horror of horrors) mingling with the other wedding guests. Newt, to Crowley's incredible amusement, shakily saluted back. It was a good thing that he was in the fake army as opposed to the real one, because any sort of actual armed force would snap him in half. "For such a large city, London occasionally feels like a very small place."

"I think I'm the only person that Sergeant Shadwell knows?" Newt said, somehow unsure as to why he was there even after he had arrived. He had the nervous tendency of saying most things as if they were questions, like he was always worried that someone would disagree with what he had to say.

"And I'm the only person that Newt knows," said Anathema Device, "so here we are."

"Well,  _thank badness_ is all I have to say," Crowley said, "because I was worried we were going to be on our own here. Tracy's relatives don't look like a friendly bunch."

"One of the kids asked me if I was cosplaying," said Anathema, looking slightly offended. "I told her I was a witch and that we all tend to dress this way, and she just said 'oh, cool, one of my friends is a witch, she reads people's star charts on Instagram.'"

"Glad to see the kids are still capable of an old-fashioned grift," Crowley said, his heart filling with optimism for the future.

"Anathema, you should really come by my bookshop one of these days," said Aziraphale. "Agnes's book of prophecy may have been the only correct one, but a few of the other ones I have hit the mark occasionally. You might find them amusing."

"I have to find something to do with my time now that we've run out of prophecies," Anathema said. "I don't have to work because of my family's investments, but it does get boring just sitting around the cottage all day."

Aziraphale beamed, half figuratively and half literally. The power of his joy made the candles scattered about the banquet hall burn slightly brighter, and the light hit Anathema's skin in just such a way as to make her look even more beautiful than she normally did. Newt, who was not generally a very observant person, noticed, and in the span of a few seconds, his knees turned to jelly and he righted himself again. Crowley was no romantic, but he saw this and grinned what he hoped was a horribly wicked grin, full of knowing and dark designs. He knew that humans were not capable of telepathy, but he caught Newt's eyes and, even though Crowley's own were hidden behind sunglasses as per usual, hoped that he was able to communicate the sentiment  _We could be coming to_ your  _wedding one of these days if you keep_ that  _up_. Newt gulped loudly, which made him think that his message somehow got through.

"Are you okay?" Anathema asked, turning to Newt. "You're looking a little green."

"I'm fine, just fine, completely fine," Newt babbled, hastily grabbing Anathema's hand. "I think it's about time for the ceremony, don't you? We should probably grab a seat before they all fill up."

"There's maybe twenty-five people here, I don't really think that's--" But before Anathema could finish her sentence, Newt had already pulled her away.

"What was all that about?" Aziraphale asked.

"Oh, just planted a worry in his mind that he might be well and truly fucked," Crowley said simply.

Aziraphale balked. "Crowley! There are  _children_ here! Watch your language."

"Fine," Crowley huffed. "I planted a worry in his mind that he might be well and truly  _in love with her 'til the end of his days and that he might be subconsciously considering marrying her_. Better?"

Aziraphale's face lit up with a joyful kind of surprise. "Crowley! What happened to all of your talk about how marriage is futile and doomed to fail and all that?"

"I never said that went anywhere. After all, wouldn't it be more wicked if I did think I was dooming him to swing at romantic windmills forever?"

"But you  _like_ Newton," Aziraphale reminded him. "You don't tend to curse people you  _like_."

"That you know of," Crowley responded. "For all you know, I've cursed you for the last six thousand years to put up with my bullshit--" another glare " _nonsense_."

Tenderness was in very short supply in Hell. Things were hard: floors, walls, any surface where you could feasibly want to recline. Attitudes, faces, ways of speaking, all of it was hard, not given to yielding. Humans were supposed to do all the yielding, after all, that was their job, but once they yielded enough, they would snap. There was very little in Hell that anyone could reasonably call "tender." Heaven, too, was so upright and steadfast that it was hard in its own way. Anyone who felt otherwise should try to hold a conversation with Michael, or Gabriel, or really any other angel aside from the one whose arm Crowley was still, for some reason, holding onto. 

Aziraphale, however, was tender, in every sense of the word. His arm had a soft give beside Crowley's, swathed in soft material. His attitude, too, was soft, easily bent or shaped in a different way when there was something he wanted. But he was so soft that, even if he was tempted to something here and there--expensive food that was made at the cost of the environment or poorly-paid kitchen staff; plays or films full of blasphemy despite being, otherwise, rapturous performances; even a touch of idolatry when it came to his books, which he might, in fact, love more than the Lord on occasion--he always melted back to his original position. 

And the expression with which he looked at Crowley was so, so tender. His eyes, his smile, the lines on his face, all of it was so soft that Crowley found himself slightly awed by it. When Aziraphale lifted a hand and placed it gently atop Crowley's, he found himself feeling vaguely dizzy, like he was staring at the sun. 

"Oh, dear, you don't have to curse me to do  _that_."

Crowley was jealous of humans, occasionally. They never had to contend with the overwhelming boredom that eternity gifted to you. They were also so, so blissfully stupid, unaware of the larger celestial machinations happening all around them, constantly, affecting them in ways they couldn't fathom. He also envied their memory, which was as malleable as gold, which could easily warp enough to buff out whole memories entirely. Humans had even found new ways of wiping their memories with alcohol and other drugs, and had thought up more in their art, like that film,  _Eternal Sunshine_ of something-or-other. Humans were constantly seeking to forget things, and often they succeeded.

Demons (and maybe angels too, who knows) were not very good at forgetting things. Crowley would always be cursed with the memory of the fourteenth century, or the sinking of the Titanic (so many beautiful things lost, but one absolutely terrible film gained), or the burning of the Library of Alexandria (he and Aziraphale had commiserated on that one, a great deal lost for both sides). Largely, he didn't try to evade those memories. He dealt with them when they arose, and he moved on. But, occasionally, he would be struck with a feeling, a very un-demonic feeling, a warm glow; warm, not hot or scalding like the fires of Hell, but bearing its own kind of unique heat. It was like slipping into a bath that had cooled down just enough, or coming inside from a frigid day to find a warm cup of tea sitting in front of you. Snakes are cold-blooded creatures, you see, and so naturally seek out warmth. And Aziraphale was practically a furnace.

That smile, that hand, stoked this warm little fire in Crowley, and he was forced to remember all the other times he had felt this way, all with Aziraphale. Meals shared, walks taken, even a gentle wing over his head, shielding him from the world's first rain.

He liked this feeling. He liked Aziraphale. In fact, if you were feeling particularly bold, you could even say that he--

"I think Newt and Anathema have gotten the right idea, haven't you?" Crowley said, extricating his arm from Aziraphale's and instead placing a forceful hand at his back, guiding (read: pushing) him to the seats. "Don't want to be the last people standing when the ceremony starts,  _how embarrassing_." 

Newt and Anathema had sat in the back on what could be considered the groom's side if the banquet hall were a bit bigger and they weren't the only people who were technically there in support of the groom. To fill out Shadwell's side a bit, Crowley and Aziraphale sat in the row directly in front of Tadfield's premier witch and witchfinder. (If anything, Crowley thought as he took his seat, Newton Pulsifer might be the greatest witchfinder of all time. Not only had he  _found_ a witch, but it now seemed as if he was intent on keeping her.)

It's not that Crowley didn't  _know_. Of course he knew. But when it came to things like this, it was altogether more convenient to act as if he didn't know. Because what would he do if he owned up to it?  _Confess?_ Demons didn't  _confess_ to things. And if he didn't confess, then his only recourse would be to suffer for all eternity with the knowledge that he had somehow managed to fall in--

One of Tracy's nieces knew the piano, because of course she did, so before Crowley could fully throw himself into an existential death spiral, the bridal march began.

Both Tracy and Shadwell had reached the point in their lives where they no longer had parents, so Shadwell ambled somewhat awkwardly up to the small stage at the rear of the banquet hall by himself. A true Scot as much as he was a witchfinder, he was fully outfitted in his family tartan, kilt and all, and looked oddly gallant as he took his place up on the stage. Instead of an altar, a small podium sat at the back.

"Anathema?" Newt whispered behind them, and Anathema squeaked in fear.

"Oh! God! Sorry!" She jumped from her seat, racing to the stage to take her place behind the podium, the verdant frills of her dress rustling like a tree in a windstorm. 

Crowley and Aziraphale both turned around to fix Newt with identical stares of confusion.

"She took some online course to officiate weddings," Newt explained.

"So you're telling me," Crowley began, "that a  _witch_ is going to officiate the wedding between a witch _finder_ and a spirit medium?"

"I think that's absolutely marvelous," Aziraphale gushed. 

"It's bizarre, is what it is," Crowley whispered. 

"But it's very  _them_ , you know?" Aziraphale asked. "And that's what weddings should be, I think. Sod all the rest." That was as close as Aziraphale came to cursing most days, and Crowley was surprised by the vigor of his opinion on the matter.

They turned back to face the ceremony just as Madame Tracy came ambling up the makeshift aisle. She was outfitted in a burnt orange dress--a color that had been very popular in the late 1960's, where Crowley figured she got the dress from--holding a bouquet of bright yellow marigolds. While her sisters seemed like the type to look upon this flagrant flouting of tradition with disdain, Crowley didn't think that anyone would be fooled into thinking that Tracy was a virgin. This dress suited her far better than a white one would. 

When she crested the stage, the ceremony formed an odd triptych: on the left, a kilted witchfinder; in the middle, an actual witch, dressed in something that resembled a Douglas fir; and on the right, the blushing bride, in a dress older than many of the wedding's attendants. Maybe Aziraphale had a point. It was all very unusual, but it would have somehow seemed more out of character if they had gone the traditional route.

When the bridal march reached its shaky conclusion (one of Tracy's nieces  _knew_ the piano, no one said she was any  _good_ at it), Anathema smiled with the same self-satisfied smile that Agnes Nutter must've had, smugly about to blow up several ill-tempered Puritans. "We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of two...unparalleled individuals. These..." Anathema's face scrunched up, as if she were trying to remember something, but was struggling to come by it. " _Two_ are truly made for each other in a way that few other couples have been, and I can certainly say that I feel lucky to be able to officiate the wedding of..." There it was again, that flash of fear and embarrassment in her dark eyes. " _These lovely folks_."

Crowley turned around again, where Newt was turning cherry tomato red, slouched low in his seat. "Is your girlfriend an amnesiac?"

Newt shook his head. "She can't remember something she was never told."

"Whatever do you mean?" Aziraphale asked.

"I don't..." Newt choked out. "I don't actually know Shadwell's full name? Or Tracy's, for that matter? They just said they needed an officiant, and Anathema wanted to do it since they weren't going to be married in a proper church, but, er, she doesn't actually know their names."

Crowley had to repress a cackle. Absolutely amazing. The ceremony was going to be enjoyable, after all. Thank Lucifer.

To their credit, the betrothed didn't seem to notice that their officiant didn't really know what to call them. They were staring at each other with a kind of fierce devotion, eyes sparkling with a complex combination of emotions that eluded Crowley's description. Crowley had spent the better part of his existence observing humans, and thought that he was something of the anthropological David Attenborough. But whatever Shadwell and Tracy were feeling, looking at each other, was beyond the pale of his understanding. It was only theirs. 

Remarkably (or perhaps miraculously, Crowley wasn't watching Aziraphale too closely), the lack of names didn't seem to impede either the precise functions of the ceremony, or its emotional impact. The unnamed couple seemed bothered least of all. 

To the sheer and utter bafflement of Tracy's family, the traditional Christian pomp and circumstance of marriage ceremonies had been replaced by a vernacular that both Shadwell and Anathema were much more familiar with. Tracy held the bell, Anathema the book, and Shadwell the candle. 

"Do you..." Anathema struggled to find a way to address Tracy that didn't require her name. " _Bride_ take this man to be your husband, in sickness and in health, in apocalypse and outside it, for as long as you both shall live?" That didn't sound like a traditional wedding vow to Crowley, but who was he to argue?

"I do," said Tracy, her joy radiating out through the banquet hall, infecting all of them. Aziraphale was practically vibrating with sheer excitement, but Crowley stayed still, frozen, leaned forward in his chair, as if trying to observe the ceremony as closely as possible.

"And do you..." Anathema turned her panic to Shadwell, who, whether out of impatience or understanding that Anathema was at a loss, cut her off.

"Aye, lassie, I do, now get on with it!"

There was a light chorus of titters throughout the banquet hall, some even from the grandchildren, who had looked up from their smart phones and Nintendo Switches upon hearing something that was genuinely funny.

"Alright, then!" Anathema said, looking more at ease. "Then I now pronounce you, by the power vested in me by Agnes Nutter, witch, and by OfficiateWeddingsNow.com, man and wife. And, because patriarchal traditions have for too long dictated this most important of ceremonies..." She leaned conspiratorially toward Tracy. "You may now kiss the groom."

Madame Tracy's smile could likely be seen from space. She needed no encouragement, and practically leaped into Shadwell's arms, bestowing upon him a kiss that sent many nieces and nephews to shield their children's eyes.

Normally, Crowley would look away from such a blatant (and embarrassing) display of physical affection. Kissing was hardly carnal, after all, and although it looked like Tracy had the honeymoon on her mind, there was nothing particularly lascivious about the kiss. They just seemed so...happy. Was this kiss different from all the others, he wondered? Did it feel different? Taste different? Even if this wedding didn't have the blessing of the church, were they able to feel that supposed transfiguration of their souls now that they were wed?

Crowley looked over to Aziraphale, half expecting to see him crying like the big softie he was, but primarily hoping for answers. After all, weddings were more the business of his end of things, even if it wasn't really his end of things anymore. 

Aziraphale wasn't crying. Like Shadwell and Tracy, Crowley struggled to parse exactly the emotion that played on the angel's face. He was smiling, but his eyes seemed sad, even if they were dry. His hands were clasped gently in his lap, but held onto each other with a kind of white-knuckled fervor. Crowley flipped through his mental thesaurus. Wistful? Did Aziraphale look wistful? And if he did, why?

This was the trouble with Earth, Crowley knew. Back in the Middle Ages, when no one knew much of anything, even down in Hell, they thought it might be something in the air, something they breathed in that made humans so stupid. After all, it didn't take more than a few seconds in Hell to realize that the air was different, but that might be because of the overwhelming scent of rot, and burning flesh, and other unpleasantries. It wasn't something in the air, Crowley knew, but it did feel sometimes as if he'd starting acting more like them, more like the humans, because he'd breathed in their air too long, the same air they breathed, pumped in and out of their fleshy lungs and spat at plants and then pumped out again. Nobody in Hell felt the way the he felt. Nobody in Hell felt at all, really. If he ever told them about this pain, about feeling something overwhelmingly, but not being able to do anything about it, or even really understand it, and then leaving it to fester like a concealed wound, he would probably get a promotion, because this was real torture, thumb screws be damned. And whatever it was, it must have gotten to Aziraphale too, because angels had about as much experience being wistful as demons did, which is to say, none at all.

To take his mind off the whole thing, he performed a minor miracle (or curse, depending on who you asked) to ensure that Madame Tracy's bouquet landed squarely in Anathema Device's hands, despite the fact that she was standing behind Tracy and that Tracy had lobbed the bouquet forward. 

Holding the bouquet, Anathema looked terrified, and Newt even more so. There are few things more terrifying than having the universe, or otherwise divine forces, confirm your love for someone, after all. 

* * *

As surprisingly enjoyable as the ceremony turned out to be, Crowley was thrilled for the reception to start. That was where the real fun was, after all, not to mention that most blissful of human concoctions: the open bar. Leave it to Shadwell, a man who, as far as Crowley had seen, primarily drank his disgusting sludge of condensed milk with a side of tea, was still a Scot at heart, and knew that no wedding was complete unless every guest was properly shitfaced. 

Being a small affair, there was no grand meal, just a buffet with some snacks and treats, leaving the bride and groom to mingle among their guests freely. It was plain from Crowley's vantage point that Tracy didn't particularly want to visit with her family, who all seemed rather scandalized by the ceremony, so Crowley poked a long finger into Aziraphale's side, causing him to genteelly choke on a crudité. 

"Let's bother the newlyweds, shall we?" Crowley asked.

After taking a moment to regain the breath he didn't need, Aziraphale pulled a face. "I don't know why you seem insistent that every time you speak with someone it's a  _bother_." 

Crowley rolled his eyes, lost on everyone because of his sunglasses. "It's just a manner of speaking, angel," he assured.

This didn't seem to assuage Aziraphale, who appeared to have worked himself into a proper huff over what seemed, to Crowley, to be nothing. "People enjoy being around you, don't you know? And I don't just mean me, although I, of course, do enjoy being around you. But lots of people enjoy conversing with you and spending time with you because you're, well, you're funny, and bright, and you seem to know everything about everything, which shouldn't be possible, because I have never even seen you  _read_."

"You do know that there is knowledge that isn't in books, right?" Crowley asked. "Like, the internet has existed for a few dozen years at this point, there's all sorts of stuff that isn't in books anymore."

Aziraphale threw up his hands, exasperated. "See? That's what I mean! You're just...you're so quick-witted, having a conversation with you occasionally feels like playing poker. I never know when you're bluffing."

"Isn't gambling a vice?" Crowley needled.

The look on Aziraphale's face was quickly shifting from exasperated to something else, something panicked.

"Are you alright?" Crowley asked. He very rarely saw Aziraphale get this way. He was usually so calm, so plummy and contented. This mood didn't suit him well at all, and it sat on him like an ugly hat.

Aziraphale took in a few breaths that looked as if they were meant to be calming, but didn't work. Eventually, he blurted "I'm headed to the bar," and ran off.

"Was it something I said?" he called to Aziraphale's retreating back, but the angel didn't lift his head, and instead began soliciting the bartender in hushed, rapid tones.

Crowley may have been an angel at one point himself, but it had been a bloody long time, so maybe he forgot what it felt like, what it did to you. Surely this was some sort of strange angelic response that he couldn't parse anymore. Rather than giving himself a migraine over it (metaphorically, of course, even a demon wouldn't curse himself with a migraine), he picked up a stray champagne flute resting on a tray, downed it, and grabbed another before moving to find the new Shadwells.

"Many happy returns!" Crowley shouted, loud enough to bother some of the other wedding guests. "Well, I think that's for birthdays, not weddings, but the sentiment is the same."

"Mr. Crowley, excellent to see you," Shadwell (Mr.) said, extending a large, rough hand that demanded shaking. "Where's Mr. Fell run off to, then?"

"Ah, we needn't worry about that stick-in-the-mud!" Crowley said, raising his glass. "He's still getting himself into the party spirit, he'll catch up to speed eventually. Why are we talking about him, anyway? You two just got bloody married!"

Shadwell (Mrs.) giggled like a woman half her age. "I suppose we have, haven't we?" Her wedding ring was modest, but still glistened in the artificially buttery lights of the banquet hall. "Much thanks to you and Mr. Fell for coming, it is really appreciated to, er..." She spared a glance at her family, milling about uncomfortably and eating the cheesecake bites that were standing in for a full wedding cake. "Fortify the ranks, as it were."

"We all have family," Crowley said, although he was pretty sure none of Tracy's or the Sergeant's family had reptiles on their heads, or fangs. "You can't choose to have them, but you can choose to avoid them, and for that, I toast to your happiness and future stealth." Crowley raised his glass again, and the Shadwells clinked their glasses against his.

"When's your turn, then?" Shadwell asked. 

A bit of champagne went up Crowley's nose. "Beg your pardon?"

"Your turn," Shadwell repeated. "Your wedding. Isn't right, a bachelor at your age." Crowley wanted to protest and say that, although he was a hilarious number of years older than the both of them, he certainly didn't look it.

"Shadwell, you've been married for twenty minutes and you're already insufferable about it. You were truly meant for wedded bliss." Tracy joined him in a laugh, but Shadwell's face remained stony and serious, the kind of face that (at least attempted to) put the fear of God into witches.

"You can't pull one over the eyes of old Shadwell!" he intoned. "These eyes are the sharpest in the kingdom, they are! And if they're half as good at spotting love as they are at spotting witches, then they're more qualified than practically anyone else's!"

Crowley squinted. "Tracy, what did you put in his drink? He's gone mad."

"Oh, he's always like this," she said lightly. "I think it's charming."

"That's good, because I think it's--"

"I've seen cows make less moony eyes at each other than you and Mr. Fell do!" the Sergeant continued, unabated. "And I'll be damned if I don't do what I can to assist in the makings of a noble and true love match!"

Bugger it all, Crowley thought. This was the opposite of what he needed right now. He enjoyed weddings for making  _other people_ suffer, he hadn't expected to experience so much of it on his end. "Shadwell, I assure you, my relationship with--"

"Real eyes realize real lies, Mr. Crowley!" Shadwell barked.

"Bravo, did you see that on a Banksy? On a Facebook meme? Did it have a Minion on it?"

Realizing that things were getting out of hand, Tracy wrapped a steadying arm around her new husband. "I saw you brought in a..." The look of the evening, which seemed to be Searching for a Word and Not Finding It, flashed across Tracy's well-made-up face. " _Lovely_ package for us. Let's go open it!"

"This harlot may be distracted by the earthly wiles of material wealth, but I have seen the truth, Crowley!"

"Alright, dear," Tracy said, patting him on the shoulder.

Crowley finished his champagne and grabbed another as they made their way to the gifts table. He could hear Tracy cooing somewhat confusedly over the gifts, but Crowley found himself sneaking glances back to where Newt and Anathema were talking, Aziraphale awkwardly orbiting around them like an anxious asteroid. He had a whiskey of some sort in his hand, a departure from his usual wine, or the readily available champagne, but not entirely outside the realm of possibility. The Americans, when they make their whiskey, say that the liquid that evaporates from barrels when they age it is drunk by angels. They even call it the “angel’s share.” As far as Crowley could tell, though, this particular angel preferred to wait until it was bottled.

Crowley caught his friend’s eye and raised his glass in his direction. Aziraphale did the same, giving a queasy sort of smile before downing his whiskey and heading back to the bar.

Really, Crowley wondered, what was going on with everyone today? Why did weddings seem to send everyone, including heavenly emissaries, completely off the deep end?

”Mr. Crowley, you shouldn’t’ve,” Shadwell intoned, holding aloft his gift. 

The answer to the question of “what do you get the witchfinder who has everything?” is a bulk container of condensed milk, ordered, naturally, from Amazon, a corporation so nefarious he wished he had thought of it himself.

”I figured I would save your bride the shame of tending to your little habit herself, so I decided I would cover it for the next few weeks, at least.” He nudged Tracy’s gift toward her. “Alright, then, your turn.”

What he had gotten Tracy would’ve been better suited to a hen party, and would’ve sent most new brides dashing for the door, or at least give them a genteel blush. Rather, Madam Tracy unboxed her new whip like many weaker women would unbox a new set of china.

”Mr. Crowley,” she said, holding the thing reverently aloft. The leather was of a particularly fine quality, a sort of deep, nearly black red color that caught the light wickedly. The handle was finely braided, being capped in a heavy, dark wood pommel that Crowley felt gave it a nice, evenly balanced sort of weight, which was always important for flogging your loved ones.

Crowley clapped them each on the shoulder and left them to ponder their gifts without his assistance. As much as he enjoyed inciting mortals to sins of the flesh, he could leave them to sort out the gory details on their own.

As Crowley left to rejoin the party, he found a horde of twelve-year-olds playing Fortnite on their smart phones, a few under-eighteens sneaking champagne when their parents weren’t looking, several emotionally stunted-looking adults, a witchfinder private, a witch, and no angel. He had just been there a moment before, so he hoped that Newt and Anathema had been paying better attention than him. 

When Crowley approached them, Newt was heatedly trying to explain the merits of Marmite to Anathema, who seemed (rightfully) horrified at the idea. Newt insisted (rightfully) that Americans eat plenty of rubbish, so she really had no moral high ground from which to critique Marmite. They were already having the sorts of arguments that couples who had been together longer than they had been alive had, the kind you had when you had covered every other conceivable topic and were instead left to ponder either the many metaphysical mysteries of the universe, or the minutiae of daily life. He assumed that, at this point, the both of them had probably had enough of metaphysics, so arguing over Marmite seemed like a much safer point of discussion.

”Where’s Aziraphale run off to?” Crowley asked.

They both looked at him, slightly dazed, as if they had both been suddenly awoken from a nap. “Run off to?” Anathema asked.

Crowley grit his teeth. Aziraphale had miracled his way out of the reception? Really? That felt like a waste of divine power, and was also confusing, because Aziraphale loved doting on the pair. In fact, Crowley often wondered if maybe he had crossed the wrong person in Ancient Greece and inspired Cupid, a chubby little angel who went about bewitching mortals to lust after each other until they died. (Either this theory was false, or the Greeks really ran with it, because Crowley couldn’t imagine Aziraphale spiriting a human woman away and locking her in a grand celestial manor and then making her immortal. You couldn’t even do that, really.) If he wasn’t planting thoughts of matrimony in their heads, then where had he gone off to? It wasn’t like the banquet hall was big. If Crowley couldn’t see him, then he wasn’t there.

Hoping that Aziraphale hadn’t simply sent himself somewhere else—like back to his bookshop, perhaps, leaving Crowley to weather the rest of this event alone—Crowley poked his head experimentally out of the back door, the one where staff would sneak out to smoke cigarettes, or drunk wedding guests would go to feel each other up against the wall, but this wedding had hardly any staff, and hardly any guests who seemed to be drunk or in a position to feel anyone up, so instead there was only one slightly crestfallen looking angel, sitting on the curb, a bottle of mid-grade scotch at his side.

”You nicked the whole bottle?” Crowley asked, closing the door behind him. “Not very angelic of you.”

Aziraphale jumped, turning around to face Crowley, who was in his most natural state of leaning languidly in a doorway. “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re implying. The bartender was already serving me from this one, so I just took it and replaced it with a full one.”

”But you needed a whole bottle of scotch to yourself?” Aziraphale pulled a face, as if he had just been caught doing something very embarrassing. While typically Crowley relished any and all occasions to embarrass Aziraphale, it didn’t seem as fun this time since he appeared to be in some sort of genuine emotional distress. He removed himself from the doorway, sitting on the curb next to Aziraphale, the bottle of scotch between them. “What happened to your gung-ho matrimonial spirit? Drinking yourself into oblivion outside a wedding seems more like my sort of thing than yours.”

Aziraphale considered that, but chased away whatever conclusion he had come to with a swig of whiskey. After he swallowed, he offered the bottle to Crowley, who gladly took it. He was more of an Irish whiskey person himself, as Irish whiskey had surely been responsible for an untold amount of debauchery, violence, and general unruliness, whereas scotch mainly recalled to him stuffy Cambridge professors and American businessmen, which were both terrible in their own ways. But still, the feeling of whiskey, any whiskey at all, chasing a hot trail down his corporeal vessel’s esophagus and landing in its stomach like a burning comet was pleasant. 

Crowley set the bottle down on the pavement with a precarious sounding thud when Aziraphale said, potentially, the last thing Crowley would have expected of him.

”Do you ever envy humans, Crowley?”

Crowley’s eyes widened. “Careful with that line of thought, angel, that’s what led me to be the handsome devil you see before you, but what led Hastur to end up as a pile of aggressive, rotting garbage.”

Aziraphale laughed at that, but only lightly, as if he wasn’t really in the mood for laughing, but the joke had gotten through to him anyway. “But that’s the funny thing, isn’t it? No matter what I say, we’re largely on our own these days.”

Crowley had thought that was a good thing, was the entire point of circumventing the end of days, in fact, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure. He decided not to press the subject. “What do you envy humans for, anyway? We’ve got all the same stuff they have: tapas bars, and nights at the opera, and old books, and music with electric guitars in it. We’ve got more wine than we could drink in ten thousand years, but I for one intend to try my best.”

”Yes, but angels and demons, none of them, they don’t ever marry.”

This conversation was taking an unforeseen turn. “You want to get _married_? For the love of all that is evil, _why_? You should’ve seen for yourself in there that weddings are awkward, expensive, typically useless affairs. If you wanted companionship so badly, you could bring back the Old Testament trend of angels consorting with mortals.”

Aziraphale grimaced. “Have you?”

”Have I what?”

”Consorted with mortals.”

Crowley sighed. All beings, no matter how long they had existed, or how long they had known each other, needed a degree of privacy. That was something that seemed so unnerving to him about Heaven, in hindsight. The boundless love of the Lord made it so that no two angels were ever fully separate beings. Crowley couldn’t remember what that was like, and had grown to love the privacy that infernality afforded him, but he had been able to tell that, over the centuries, Aziraphale had started to slip further and further away from that connection as he became more invested in the affairs of Earth and less invested in the affairs of Heaven. He always seemed to be vaguely lonely behind his eyes, no matter what else he was feeling.

But, even after knowing each other for, give or take, 6000 years, Crowley still had things he kept to himself, and assumed that Aziraphale did as well. This was one of them.

”Once or twice,” he said, hoping to sound urbane and aloof about the whole thing and not as absurdly embarrassed as he now felt. If God had made humans less beautiful and fascinating and absurd and wonderful, he wouldn’t have bothered, but as it stood, they were, so he had. It had been more than a couple, but less than a dozen over the whole course of his existence. The humans who tempted his hand were rare, exceptional specimens.

”What was it like?”

Crowley really didn’t want to talk about this with Aziraphale, or anyone, really. He had told the proper authorities, because he had clearly won souls for the Dark Lord, but he always felt bad about it, in the end. After all, didn’t he like them? Condemning someone to eternal torture didn’t seem like a good way to show affection.

”I wouldn’t recommend it,” Crowley said. “Humans are...fragile. Not to mention perishable. What felt like small flings to me were entire lifetimes for them. Hardly seemed fair.”

”Their lives are so very short,” Aziraphale agreed, voice low and distant.

”I have to know something, though,” Crowley said, leaning in conspiratorially over the bottle of scotch. “The whole ‘souls eternally bonded over the holy union of matrimony’ thing. Does it really work?”

”Can’t say, frankly,” Aziraphale admitted. “That’s all Upstairs business, home office stuff. I was mainly in charge of getting them to Heaven, not with what happened after they got there.”

”So it might all be bollocks,” Crowley posited.

”Perhaps,” Aziraphale said. “I certainly hope not, though. Eternity is a very, very long time to spend alone.”

Crowley was getting the feeling that they were having two separate conversations at once.

"They're not really alone, though," Crowley responded.  _And neither are you_. "That's the whole point of Heaven, isn't it?  _Nearer my God to Thee_ , and all that?"

"But that's different," Aziraphale insisted. "God loves everyone, everything. That's what God  _is._ " Crowley, who remembered the flood, the Ten Plagues, the world-ending war that almost happened, would beg to differ. "But humans love each other. Not because they have to, but because they  _want_ to. Even if they  _don't_ want to, in fact. They can't help it. They just..." Aziraphale reached for the scotch. "They just love. Even if they shouldn't, or their love isn't returned, or it's dangerous, they do it anyway. Isn't that remarkable?" Aziraphale took a long pull from the bottle. He was worrying something in his mind, rolling it around like a marble, and whatever it was was causing him a great deal of pain. Crowley was not a comforting presence. He was good at frightening people, enticing them, making them laugh, but not comforting. He wasn't sure what Aziraphale needed. He wasn't sure what Aziraphale wanted, either.

"What do you think eternity is, Crowley?" Aziraphale asked, setting the bottle back down, a bit unsteadily this time.

This felt like a trick question. "It's just forever, isn't it?"

Aziraphale chuckled, a deep, warm sound, an ember buried under a snow drift. "Depends on who you ask, actually. For a while, that was all theologians argued about, eternity. It's so difficult for humans to understand, since their lives are so short. There are some fascinating conclusions they came to, these theologians. Thomas Aquinas, he decided that eternity is what God experiences, and that it's not an endless stream of time, moving from one point to another, but every moment in time, happening all at once. God sees them all as if they happened at the same time: the fall of man, the crucifixion of Jesus, last Tuesday, happening all on top of each other."

Crowley had never been one for philosophy. Few people enjoyed themselves over philosophy. Enjoyment, sin, passion, sorrow, those were all more the realm of poetry, music, art. Philosophy was all too heady to really get damned over. Crowley never understood the fuss about it. "See, this is why we have so few philosophers down in Hell. They spend too much time parsing this nonsense to really be tempted to do anything. Did you know that Kant never even left his hometown? Spent his whole life picking apart the finer parts of morality, but never went on a bloody vacation. That's no life if you ask me."

"That idea, though," Aziraphale continued, as if Crowley hadn't spoken. "That God sees every event in all of history all the time, that  _that's_ what eternity is. That haunts me. Every invention, every armistice, every great work of art or moment of human kindness, all at the same time as the Holocaust, the Black Death, the Chernobyl disaster. As if none of the good things make a difference."

Crowley grabbed the bottle of scotch and proceeded to finish it off himself. A third of a bottle of middling scotch would do in lesser men, but merely left Crowley's grasp on reality pleasantly loose, which he felt he needed if he was going to be of any help.

"What are you doing?" Aziraphale asked, watching Crowley chug in horror.

Once the bottle was empty, Crowley chucked it in one of the recycle bins stacked in the back of the building. "No more scotch for you, alright? Stick to wine, angel, clearly this turns you into some sort of depressed philosophy tutor."

"I'm not  _depressed_ ," Aziraphale protested.

"Oh, you're not, then? Then why are you ruminating on Thomas Aquinas and the great tragedies of history? Is that something a non-depressed person does?"

"I'm not a person!" Aziraphale shouted. Crowley recoiled, instinctively, at this small fraction of the divine wrath of an angel. Aziraphale never shouted, hardly ever even raised his voice. He wasn't given to anger or passion of any sort, and Crowley wondered what Aziraphale must've looked like to the first humans, massive and shining and bearing a flaming sword. He must've been terrifying. Seeing that he had startled Crowley, Aziraphale sighed, heavily, and rubbed at his eyes as if he was tired. "I'm sorry, dear boy, I've just been doing a bit of thinking lately."

"No kidding."

"It's just that..." he began, then stopped, realigned his thoughts. "I'm happy with the way things turned out. I truly am. I didn't want the world to end any more than you did. But I always had a purpose, a sense of direction. No matter what I got up to down here with you, I always had work I needed to be doing. But now..." He looked around where they were sitting, peering out at a cramped car park, a few recycle bins, an empty bottle of scotch, and the perennially grey London sky, even in the middle of June. The summer had just started, and they still had a few hours of milky sunlight left before it all faded to black. If you were looking for something to reconfirm your belief that the Earth was worth saving as-is, this was likely not the best place to start. He turned to Crowley, pale eyes searching. "Now what?"

This was why angels were meant to stay within the Host, singing the Almighty's praises forever, Crowley figured. They weren't equipped to deal with the kind of existential crises that humans encountered every day, the questions of free will, how to spend your time. But, whereas humans had a very finite number of years at their disposal, Aziraphale didn't, and that conferred its own kind of dread. Crowley was used to this kind of thinking by now. After all, wasn't it an existential crisis that landed him and all the other rebel angels where they were? He just happened to be, perhaps, the most rebellious of the bunch, because he had evaded his punishment and was now larking about at human weddings, talking about Thomas Aquinas and slamming scotch. He was practically human, and if he was to judge what kind of person he had become based solely on that day's events, he was a pretty insufferable one. 

"What do you mean, 'now what?'" Crowley asked.

"What do I do now? With eternity?"

For Crowley, the answer to this question was simple. "Whatever you want."

The answer, which seemed so easy to understand to Crowley, apparently struck a kind of fear in the angel sitting next to him. He was doing that funny thing with his hands again, wringing them bloodless, as if around an invisible rosary. "Whatever I want?"

"Yeah," Crowley said, shrugging. It really wasn't that complicated.

He felt it before he understood it, a soft pressure on his mouth, slightly sticky, brief, but insistent. When Aziraphale pulled his mouth away from Crowley's, Crowley licked his lips without being able to stop himself. They tasted of scotch, warm and smoky and sweet, like sitting beside a well-tended fire. They tasted like Aziraphale. 

Dumbfounded, they stared at each other in startled silence for a moment or two, before Aziraphale said, with the shaky-kneed, hard-won confidence of someone defending a dissertation, "That's what I want."

Crowley's mind had been scrambled to static, replaced with a persistent, skull-rattling hum. On that kiss--the first Crowley had had in many years, and possibly the first Aziraphale had had  _ever_ \--was just a spark of the divine essence that still dwelt inside Aziraphale. As native as he had gone, it had never really left. Crowley would have thought it would burn, like holy water, but the feeling made him homesick. There was still recognition in it, even after all this time. Inside Aziraphale's kiss was something that felt like home.

" _That's_ what you want?" Crowley asked, unable to articulate anything more complex than that. Slowly, that distancing impulse, the one that let him bury his feelings under witticisms and jokes and enough layers of irony to create sedimentary rock, came back, always at the ready to protect Crowley from himself. "I know you've always been slow on the cultural uptake, Aziraphale, but it's been a couple centuries at least since friends could casually kiss on the mouth."

"What do you feel for me, Crowley?"

Hell may be full of torturers, Crowley thought, but the violence of angels wasn't spoken of enough. They should really collaborate more often, contract out some suffering, because this was worse than being dragged over any hot coals, worse than having his fingernails peeled off or whatever ingenious methods of bodily harm Hell had concocted since he had last visited. If Crowley had a Hell, if Beelzebub really had set a devil aside just for him, this would be it, the one thing in the whole of creation he was terrified of ruining, asking him to his face to ruin it. 

"I don't know what you mean," Crowley lied, adding a charming smirk for good measure, hoping to throw Aziraphale off the scent. It didn't work.

"Because you clearly feel  _something_ ," Aziraphale insisted. "We both do. It's been there for ages, but we've been dancing around it for so long now. If I didn't say anything, if I didn't..." Aziraphale's eyes flickered to his mouth. Crowley swallowed. "Then nothing would have changed. And that would have been...fine, I suppose. I enjoy spending time with you, of course, doing the things we always do. But the apocalypse has a funny way of helping you realign your priorities, and I didn't want to spend the rest of eternity not knowing."

Had he really been that obvious? Crowley always thought that he did a good job of keeping his feelings--particularly the embarrassing, potentially-good-thing-ending ones--down low, where no one could see. Sure, they got the occasional joke from friends and passersby about the nature of their relationship, but those were  _jokes_. Over time, Crowley had learned a lesson that ran perhaps counter-intuitive to the demonic code of conduct: you could want things you knew you couldn't have, but you couldn't attempt to take them. Down that path lay ruin. And of course he couldn't have Aziraphale, not in that way. And having him as a friend, as a drinking buddy and confidante and plant-waterer when Crowley was out of town, as a place to seek repose and respite when the world didn't seem worth saving anymore, all of that was better than nothing. In fact, it was better than practically anything else Crowley could think of. He didn't want to throw that away because he was greedy.

"You're not saying anything," Aziraphale said, stating the obvious.

Crowley thought back nostalgically on his days as a snake. He wanted to curl up and hide beneath a rock somewhere, where his decisions didn't matter. But Aziraphale had a point. If there was any sort of set of values that demons were meant to hold, there had to be at least one, the one they had staked their claim on: knowing was better than not knowing.

Crowley dragged the truth up through his throat like a sword from a rusty scabbard. It came out quiet, slightly hoarse, as Crowley barely said it loud enough to get it past his lips. Like Aziraphale, Crowley was immediately, tangibly aware of how long eternity was. He didn't want to spend it alone either. 

"I love you."

Those three syllables felt momentous to him, like they should be carved on stone tablets, carried down, housed in a great golden box beneath a pillar of flame during the night and smoke during the day. Aziraphale did not seem to agree.

"Well, of course I know  _that_."

Crowley's world skidded to a halt. "Excuse me? I just told you I loved you, you're kind of ruining this moment for me."

"Of course you love me!" Aziraphale chirped, as if this were glaringly obvious, which it might, in fact, have been. "You love your friends. Everyone loves their friends. I want to know--"

Crowley tore off his sunglasses, grabbing Aziraphale squarely by the shoulders so that they could really look each other in the eyes. Crowley felt as if his soul were slowly being burned away from his vessel, like God were a great child holding a magnifying glass to the sun, cooking him alive. He didn't want to say this any more than he had to. "I don't love you like a friend, Aziraphale. I mean, I do. You're my best friend. But I love you  _more_ than that. Like Newt and Anathema love each other, or Tracy and Shadwell. Like Adam and Eve. Like a lover loves a lover."

"Oh," Aziraphale said simply. "Then I suppose I love you as well. Like a..." He coughed. "Like a lover."

"Well, that's that cleared up," Crowley said, removing his hands. He placed his sunglasses back over his eyes, feeling a bit more secure. The air felt charged, heavy, like if anyone struck a match, the whole car park would explode.

Aziraphale started to laugh, a bright, ringing, church-bell sound. Church bells had never done much for Crowley in the past, had always thought they sounded rather ominous, but this was different. It was infectious. The fear, the anxiety, the shame, all of it melted away, like sugar in hot tea, gone and replaced with sweetness. If he wasn't so happy, he would be disgusted with himself. "So you're my lover, then?"

The question sounded alien and beautiful coming from Aziraphale's mouth, like the first words from a new language. "If you'll have me."

"Of  _course_ , I'll have you, dear! Darling? Sweetheart?"

"We'll sort it out," Crowley said. "After all, we do have eternity."

"That we do," Aziraphale said. He grabbed one of Crowley's hands in his, holding it firmly, but not hard enough to hurt. Even when he was grasping, Aziraphale was still all softness. "So what do lovers do, exactly? I've observed them from afar, but never really seen the specifics."

Crowley could think of dozens of exciting things that lovers did, but this was still new, its foundations freshly relaid. They had time to get round to the exciting things. "Well, we are at a wedding, which means that, primarily, lovers dance."

Aziraphale's excitement dampened. "Oh no. They don't do the gavotte anymore, do they?"

"I'm afraid not, angel." The endearment had previously been more of a taxonomic designation than anything. He was an angel, after all, and "Aziraphale" was really a mouthful. The old nickname felt new again, freshly shined, heavy with added meaning. "I do think, though, that you will be quite impressed with this new human innovation called 'slow dancing.'"

Whether it was infernal intervention that resulted in Aziraphale and Crowley coming back into the banquet hall midway through a slow, ambling tune--some warm, jazzy number that seemed like the sort of thing Tracy would listen to--is a matter for another day and someone else's discussion. All that mattered was that Tracy's upright sisters and their stiff-backed husbands were sitting dully at a few small tables, doughy faces illuminated by the blue glow of their grandchildren's mobile phone screens. A few of Tracy's nieces and nephews were gamely attempting to dance with the disinterest of couples who should never have married and were slowly realizing that themselves.

But, in the center of the dance floor, the Mr. and Mrs. Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell moved blissfully together. Neither were particularly good dancers, but this sort of dancing, as Crowley explained, wasn't meant to be "good." Anathema and Newt had the right idea, shifting from side to side, so absorbed in each other that they couldn't notice how they looked like teenagers at a school dance.

"Oh," Aziraphale said, surveying the other dancers. "Yes, I think I could manage that."

And he did, maybe miraculously, but perhaps not. Half the fun of love was embarrassing yourself until you got it right. Crowley, despite being a very easily embarrassed demon, didn't want to miss any of it.

"So this is what lovers do," Aziraphale marveled as they rocked from side to side, vaguely in time with the music. 

"If you think  _this_ is good," Crowley said, "try wrapping your arms around my neck instead of holding my hand."

Aziraphale, with all the glee of someone discovering an incredible new invention, gently took his hand from Crowley's and looped both arms around his neck. Crowley's hands both rested on his waist, and they were now standing much closer together. "Oh, yes, this is much better."

"You could lay your head on my shoulder, as well," Crowley said. His face was hot--maybe from the scotch, maybe from something else--but the rest of his body was gently warm, as if he were resting in some sort of invisible sun beam. "You know. If you want." Aziraphale shuffled closer, careful not to throw off the rhythm, and placed his head gently against Crowley's shoulder. 

Even after being at the whims of Agnes Nutter's Nice & Accurate Prophecies, Crowley didn't like thinking that anything was Meant to Be. That took all the fun out of free will. You couldn't really hold someone accountable for sinning or doing good if they were always bound to do it. And this wasn't meant to be, not really. They had made choices along the way, had decided together that this was what they wanted. But they fit together so nicely, it was nice to indulge the thought, at least. 

"So, what else do lovers do?" Aziraphale asked, eyes closed, pale lashes curled atop his cheeks. 

"Oh, all sorts of things," Crowley said quietly. He didn't much care if anyone was looking at them or listening to them, but he wanted to keep this for himself. He was, after all, a very greedy demon. "They go on dates: to eat dinner, or see a film, or go ice skating."

"We already do that," Aziraphale reminded him.

"You're not wrong. But now we'll add other things. Kissing and holding hands and such."

"Oh, that sounds lovely," Aziraphale said dreamily.

"It does, doesn't it?" Crowley agreed.

History was full of terrible things. Crowley wouldn't argue with anyone about that. Without the biblical apocalypse to contend with, humans would be left to their own devices to kill each other and destroy the world the way they always had, and likely always would. If they didn't get their act together, they would all die of heat stroke from climate change, or destroy each other through genocide out of their ignorance, or continue messing around with nuclear weapons even after it had become abundantly clear, to Crowley anyway, that they couldn't be trusted with them. History had always been full of horrible tragedies and cruelty, and likely always would be. But say that Thomas Aquinas was right, that God really was watching all of history all at once, every instance on top of the other. If They were to lay out every event from Crowley's eternal life, all the pain, all the sin, all the fear, Crowley thought that this moment would serve as a good counterweight, and they had all of eternity to accumulate more, to create so many good memories that the bad ones simply couldn't compete. As Aziraphale and Crowley gently swayed, eternity didn't seem like such a burden.

It felt like a gift.


End file.
